We export the world’s food — but import the bread we eat

Sunday, 21 June 2026

New Zealand produces food in volumes far greater than it needs to feed its population, yet much of the bread on supermarket shelves is made from imported grain. As farmers launch a new trademark to identify New Zealand-grown grain, it raises a bigger question: just how food-secure are we? Nadine Roberts investigates.

It’s a busy weekend morning in the bread aisle, and Gemma is trying to steer a toddler who has decided the supermarket trolley is a moving snack buffet.

“I don’t think we need this much,” she says, lifting loaves back onto the shelf. “And not the white bread. How about this one?” she adds, picking up a wholemeal option.

Like many shoppers, she assumes the bread she’s buying is made from New Zealand wheat.

It isn’t.

At least three-quarters of bread sold in New Zealand is made using imported grain, despite the fact we produce high-quality milling wheat here.

“That can’t be right,” she says, when we tell her. “I thought if it was made here, it was our wheat.”

The confusion is common — and sits at the centre of a much bigger contradiction: New Zealand exports billions of dollars of food every year, yet imports more wheat than it grows.

This year, Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) forecasts suggest New Zealand will import around 668,000 tonnes of wheat, compared with about 419,000 tonnes produced domestically.

That gap has prompted farmers and the Foundation for Arable Research to launch the NZ Grown Grains Trademark — designed to help consumers identify products made with locally grown grain, although it allows for up to 20% imported or blended grain.

But behind the label lies a bigger question: in a country known for feeding the world, just how food-secure are we?

The quantity myth

Food security is not just about producing enough food — it is about whether people can afford it, access it and rely on a system that remains stable through shocks.

New Zealand exports three to four times more food than it imports, but the balance is misleading. The country exports high-value proteins and fruit, while importing staple ingredients — particularly wheat — that underpin everyday diets.

Hugh Campbell, an Otago University professor of sociology, gender studies and criminology, says that creates a common misconception about self-sufficiency.

“The capacity to feed 40 million people is the capacity to feed 40 million people with a very selected group of food products.”

For Campbell, the issue is not volume, but diversity.

“New Zealand excels at dairy, meat and a handful of export-focused products, but we are far less self-sufficient in many staple foods.”

Wheat sits at the centre of that gap because it’s the backbone of everyday foods — bread, pasta, noodles, cereals and baked goods — and also a key ingredient in animal feed systems for poultry, pigs and parts of the dairy sector.

Less visible again, wheat derivatives are used in pharmaceuticals, adhesives, packaging, cosmetics and brewing.

That means wheat is not just a food ingredient — it is embedded across the wider economy. And when supply or prices shift, the effects ripple well beyond the bread aisle.

Economics vs security

“We are one of the oddest countries in the world,” Campbell says, summarising New Zealand’s dependence on food exports alongside persistent questions about food security.

“Yes, we have food security issues… but we probably shouldn’t.”

He traces the roots of the problem to New Zealand’s colonial and post-war economic development, when the country’s agricultural system expanded in response to food shortages in Britain. That demand helped lock in a production model focused on a narrow range of export commodities —particularly red meat and dairy — rather than diversified, mixed farming.

“We were specialised from the get-go.”

That specialisation, Campbell argues, has created a structural paradox: New Zealand’s economy now depends on producing high-value export food, which in turn shapes what is grown, where it is grown, and what is prioritised domestically.

“The only way New Zealand survives economically is if our farmers are producing expensive food.”

But that model has consequences at home.

“There’s going to be a whole pile of people in our country for whom food is going to be too expensive, so we compensate by importing a lot of cheap food.”

It is this tension — between export efficiency and domestic resilience — that sits at the heart of New Zealand’s food system.

Campbell says the vulnerability is not obvious in normal times, but becomes clear when global systems are disrupted.

“If shipping links were cut by war, or there was a major international shock, New Zealand would discover how narrow its domestic food production really is.”

With an estimated significant share of food inputs imported at any given time, even short-term disruption would affect not just availability, but the diversity and affordability of food on supermarket shelves.

And that, he argues, is the real concern.

“We are actually really vulnerable on our external trade. Everyone’s looking at ships full of oil and diesel, but it’s the same thing in terms of all our movement of agricultural commodities.”

New Zealand, he says, is exceptionally efficient at producing export food, but that does not necessarily translate into resilience in the domestic food system during major shocks.

That places it in a distinctive position globally.

Countries such as Singapore explicitly plan for import dependence through formal food security strategies, despite producing less than 10% of their food domestically. Australia, by contrast, treats staple crops such as wheat as strategic national assets within a large-scale production system.

New Zealand sits somewhere between these models: highly integrated into global markets and dependent on imported staples, but without a single unifying food security strategy.

And Campbell does not expect that to change.

“A national food security strategy would sit very awkwardly with the dominant structural orientation of our food export economy.”

So are we actually at risk?

On a 500-acre arable farm near Dunsandel in Canterbury, Doug and Gabi Michael are among those welcoming the launch of the NZ Grain Trademark — a label designed to give consumers a clearer choice at the checkout when it comes to New Zealand-grown grain.

Their operation, Gladfield Malt, processes grain from their own farm and around 150 contracted growers across the region for both domestic and export brewing markets.

It is, in many ways, a success story for New Zealand arable farming. But Doug Michael says grain production still sits in the shadow of the country’s larger dairy and red meat sectors.

“We are undervalued,” he says simply.

For Michael, the trademark is not just a marketing tool — it is a signal that domestic grain production matters.

Any shift that encourages more consumers to choose New Zealand-grown grain, he says, would help strengthen local production.

“And that’s important.”

He is careful not to overstate the risk, but says the economics of arable farming are becoming increasingly difficult.

“I don’t want to dramatise things, but it’s getting expensive to grow crops. It’s expensive to process crops, but it’s even more expensive to ship crops around the world.”

In his view, the priority is not panic — but resilience.

“We need to look after what we’ve got, and make sure we’ve got enough of our own grain in case of emergencies.”

Government view: System stability

MPI says domestic grain production remains an important part of New Zealand’s food system, but does not expect material disruption to supply from imported grain.

MPI also considers New Zealand to be food secure.

“New Zealand’s food system has proven its resilience through a range of disruptions,” says MPI Chief Insights Officer Jarred Mair, pointing to the Covid-19 pandemic, pest incursions, and regional climate events.

The agency says it continues to monitor global risks and maintain preparedness planning to mitigate potential shocks.

Asked about future risks, Mair says challenges are more likely to come from structural pressures rather than sudden shortages — such as climate variability, rising input costs, and access to resilient seed technologies.

He also acknowledges geopolitical instability could affect global grain markets and trade flows.

“MPI is actively working to strengthen resilience across the food system.”

Where the pressure shows first: poultry

In practice, some of the clearest exposure sits in industries that rely heavily on imported grain.

The Poultry Industry Association says 70–80% of grain used in chicken and egg production is imported.

But chief executive Fiona MacMillan says this is not considered a major vulnerability in normal conditions.

“Grain supply chains have remained reliable through global disruption, including Covid-19 and ongoing geopolitical conflicts,” she says.

That resilience, she says, comes from diversification — multiple grain sources and multiple exporting countries.

However, she points to a more immediate constraint closer to home: infrastructure.

Port capacity and limited wharf space, combined with regulatory constraints, can slow the rate at which imports can be increased during a shock.

“This limits the speed at which import volumes can be increased in response to a supply shock. This is a domestic infrastructure risk as much as a global supply chain one,” she says.

And she acknowledges that poultry production has limited buffer capacity in a prolonged disruption.

“It depends on the scale of the disruption, but the potential consequences for New Zealand would be significant. Our chickens — both meat and laying birds — rely entirely on feed. We produce around 103 million dozen eggs a year, about 232 per person. It is a super important part of our diet.”

Chicken is now the most consumed meat in New Zealand, accounting for around 52% of total meat consumption.

“It’s affordable, it’s healthy, and it’s relatively low carbon,” MacMillan says. “That’s why secure feed supply chains matter so much.”

The bigger question

While MPI maintains the grain sector is stable, some in the industry see a different trajectory.

Arable land now makes up around 2% of New Zealand’s land area and has been steadily declining as farmland shifts toward dairy, forestry and non-cropping uses.

Farmers say that, combined with tightening margins, could see further contraction in the sector — raising concerns about growing reliance on imported grain and, in turn, long-term food security exposure.

Carlos Bagrie, a Grain Mark Ambassador and husband of celebrity chef Nadia Lim, says returns to arable farming need to improve significantly to change the trend.

He estimates margins would need to lift by around 15% to materially shift incentives.

“The bottom line is if we turn the engine off on arable farming it will be very hard to restart it again,” he says.

For Campbell, the professor, the issue ultimately returns to a broader question about national preparedness.

“If New Zealand faced a prolonged disruption tomorrow, would we know how to respond?”